Yet, being a Saxon and a forest-bred man, I cared not at all for the stone-walled houses.  They seemed low and hot to me, and above one was the ceiled roof, all unlike the high open timbering of our halls, where the smoke curls, and the birds are as free to perch on the timbers as they were in the oaks whence they were cut.  The walls round the town irked me also, for one does not like to feel shut in from the open country.  One must have fences, of course, and maybe in border places earthworks and stockades, but surely no more should be needed.  Yet in a day or two I grew used to all this, and I have naught but good to say of Caerleon elsewise.

For when we had been there a few days Jefan would speak with me, and together we went to the walls of the city and looked southward across the river toward the Severn sea, beyond which lay my home.

“See, friend,” he said, “there is your way, and there is a ship crossing to the old port at Worle tomorrow.  Now, from all you have told me, there is a chance that through her daughter Quendritha may yet try to harm you.”

“I think she cannot,” I said.  “So far as I know, she has never learned where my home is.”

“Yet,” he said, “go home and see how things are for you.  Well I know that your first thought is for the Lady Hilda, and that is right.  I am going to see your wedding.  But you cannot take her home without going there first to learn whether she will have any home to go to.”

“That is what I have been thinking,” said I.  “You are but first in speaking of the matter by a day or so.”

“Well, then, do you go at once.  If all is well, then you shall come back here, and so there will be a wedding.  If not, come back, and I will give you a place with me.

“Nay, but listen.  I have sorely troublesome tenants, the Danes, in our land of Gower, and you can take them in hand for me.  You are the man I need as what you would call the ealdorman there.  You may take such a place in all honour.”

“Jefan,” I said, “you are indeed a friend, and I will not say no to you.  All seems to go well when you have a hand in it.”

“Sometimes,” said he, laughing.  “I only wish that everything was as easily arranged as this.  Well, go.  I want you back to stay, and yet I don’t, as one may say.  At all events, we will have the wedding here.”

Now it need not be said that on the next day I did go, landing in the early morning under the ancient walled camp of Worle, which the Eastern traders made when they used to come for our Mendip metals; and there I hired a horse and rode homeward, sorely longing for my good skew-bald steed, which stood in a Roman stable at Caerleon.

Now I cannot tell all the thoughts which came into my mind as I climbed the last hill and looked down into the wooded hollow where lay our home.  The long years seemed to roll back, and it was but as yesterday that I had been there.  And then I met a man I knew, one of our own thralls; and he seemed to have aged all in a moment, for I had thought, before he drew near, to see his face as it had been on the day when I went to Winchester to see the bride of our king brought home.  He did not know me, but he doffed his cap.